It’s a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that’s what gets lost in all that Noise.

I was a hugely unchaperoned reader, and I would wander into my local public library and there sat the world, waiting for me to look at it, to find out about it, to discover who I might be inside it.

There ain't nothing good that don't got real bad waiting to follow it.

...the lesson of forever and ever is that knowing a man's mind ain't knowing the man.

If you ever see a war," she says, not looking up from her clipboard, "you'll learn that war only destroys. No one escapes from a war. No one. Not even the survivors.

To live is to fight, to preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for.

It is a true story, the monster said. Many things that are true feel like a cheat.